But in both case, you will have to go in the installation folder to run Eclipse. Even the installer does not create a .desktop file, so you won’t find Eclipse in your distribution menu. And depending on your distro, it might not be possible to lock Eclipse icon to the launcher. As a regular Ubuntu user, with the Unity desktop, I like to have my favorite applications in the launcher.

Create a .desktop file

The solution is actually very easy: in the installation folder, create an empty file, name it Eclipse.desktop and copy paste this code:

Thanks, helped me do fix my Neon launching problem with Ubuntu 16.04. If I start Eclipse and pin it to the launcher, trying to run it from the launcher causes a java exception. However starting Eclipse by a desktop file and pinning this to launcher works fine.

Have you tried with standard Gnome and its dock? There doesn’t seem to be the context menu to add it to favorites (I created the desktop file and I can run it manually but then I cannot add it to the dock as favorite)…